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Book Review: ‘A Love Song for Ricki Wilde’ by Tia Williams

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams takes a supernatural direction when a florist falls for a man who is cursed to live forever. 

Ricki Wilde is the youngest daughter in a wealthy Atlanta family that takes their funeral business seriously. Except she loves floral design and uses that passion for the funerals and social media clout. Her sisters and her mother think it’s a crying shame that Ricki wants to play with flowers all day instead of taking leadership roles in the undertaking empire. She prepares a business plan for a flower shop, but it’s rejected. She wonders about her next move. One day, she comforts an elegantly dressed widow named Ms. Della. Upon hearing Ricki’s story, Ms. Della offers her the first story of her brownstone in Harlem. Since Ms. Della just lost her husband, she didn’t want to be entirely alone. The first story had been vacant for years, but it’s the perfect place for a flower shop.

In Harlem, Ricki opens her shop. She finds out that the brownstone was the site of a famous Harlem Renaissance nightclub. As she searches around the property, she sees a man her age who disappears mysteriously. She even notices the scent of night-blooming jasmine in February, which is unusual because it’s not the flower’s season. That’s also mysterious. While trying to unravel the mystery of the location, she needs to keep her business afloat. Via Instagram, she highlights different flowers at different locations throughout the neighborhood to boost business. Her heightened visibility leads her to find the mysterious man. 

Ezra Walker has been looking for Ricki forever. And Ricki feels a supernatural pull to Ezra. She has tea parties with Ms. Della upstairs and confides in her celebrity friend, Tuesday Rowe, about her newfound love interest. Ricki learns more about Ezra as she falls deeper in love with him. But he has a secret. He’s a perennial. Not the plant that returns every year, but a person who has been cursed with immortal life. Once upon a time, Ezra was an up-and-coming pianist during the Harlem Renaissance who escaped the segregated South after his family was killed by Jim Crow terrorism. He was cursed by a dancer at the nightclub that used to be housed in Ricki’s brownstone. The only woman who could break his curse is Ricki. Ezra had been writing a song for nearly a century that he could only play for Ricki. If they are still together by Leap Day, then Ricki will be cursed with immortal life as well.

The author loves to weave pop culture references into her stories, and this story doesn’t disappoint. It also seemed like she had been pressured by an industry that loves romantasy to inject that magic into a modern-day love story, and it works seamlessly. The fantasy sprinkled into the romance doesn’t overtake the story despite the plot leaning more toward fantasy. The groundedness in reality is still strong. The term “perennial” for an immortal person also seems to be up for debate as a flowerlike word choice by the author, instead of an official dictionary definition. 

Another aspect of the romantasy is the historical element of the Harlem Renaissance and its documented and undocumented culture. Stories still emerge about the 1920s era, where African American society flourished in New York City. The story is set in a brownstone that was a nightclub where sultry sin and artistic influence occurred inside and outside its walls. The setting remains a century-old dream for many people like Ricki and Ms. Della, who develop an intergenerational friendship that supports each other in their transitions, as Ricki finds love after leaving home and starting a business, and Ms. Della finds love after the death of her husband. Harlem feels like a magical place all on its own. 

Overall, the love story stretches over pages with positive energy, though the ending is likely predictable for readers who know to expect the happily ever after by dissecting every character’s relationship with each other. 

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Book Review: ‘Rhythm & Muse’ by India Hill Brown

*Given an advanced reading copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

Rhythm & Muse by India Hill Brown is a predictable young adult romance novel giving us the perspective of the boy pining for the popular girl he has a crush on.

Darren likes Delia Dawson, the popular girl at his school known as Dillie who has her own podcast Dillie D in the Place to Be. He has Delia Daydreams, in which his best friend Justin always keeps shaking him out of. One day, Justin gets to spend time with his wannabe rapper cousin in a recording studio session. Darren tags along though he knows Justin’s cousin doesn’t have the rhythmic talent necessary to be a decent rapper. While in the studio, after listening to awful raps, Darren and Justin perk up to the cousin’s beats. Justin pushes Darren to sing on the beat for fun. Darren used to sing in the choir, but a mortifying experience made him drop out of choir and put his music dreams on hold. But he sings anyway – about Delia. Coincidentally, Delia’s podcast is running a competition for a new jingle. Somehow the track Darren recorded was submitted anonymously. As podcast listeners groove to Darren’s track, he can’t let anyone know he recorded it, especially Delia. He realizes they attend the same church, though he hadn’t been there in a while. He joins Delia on an all-night church sleepover where they bond over 90s R&B and their suspicions on the anonymous song that’s growing in popularity. While Darren gets closer to his dream girl, he second-guesses every move until Delia makes him more comfortable in the moment. When Delia announces the winning song of the competition, Darren knows it’s his chance to tell her the truth. But he still second-guesses telling her the truth, which endangers the relationship they are trying to build.

First, Darren’s obsession with Delia makes him a boring character. Yes, he sings, but the reason why he stopped is weak, and it is built up too much throughout the story to be that weak. The incident that has taken him away from music also has decreased his desire for college, in which he is working with a high school counselor. His second-guessing with Delia eliminates tension between the characters too quickly. He already has the girl the minute they click, which makes for a predictable ending. Other issues like his parents being married and in love and having simple dialogue adds to the boringness in the family of characters. Not saying we need a divorce, but the parents didn’t add enough tension to the situation. His love for 90s R&B could be a questionable decision since today’s teens are most likely listening to contemporary artists. Though it’s talked about how his parents taught him to love 90s R&B, it comes off as inauthentic with a music-obsessed teen not aligning himself more with music topping the charts now.

Overall, this young adult debut reads on the bland side with the unexciting characters and developments. It seems like a safe choice in YA literature as the genre continues to be battered by the banned books movement. The entire point of a romance novel is to reach the happily-ever-after, but when the main character’s personality is too tied to the person they want to be with and the tension falls apart too quickly, the story becomes less entertaining.

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Authors Argue B&N’s Stocking Policy Hurts Sales

SHE LIT: Authors Argue B&N’s Stocking Policy Hurts Sales 💸

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Bulk of middle grade, YA fiction must prove profitability for placement at bookstores

Authors are fighting back against a Barnes & Noble stocking policy that they say hurts the sales of debut novels by people of color.

Middle grade author Kelly Yang shared a viral video of her daughter in a Barnes & Noble bookstore reacting to how her new novel Key Player in her Front Desk series was not going to be stocked at stores with other books in the same genre.

The rest of the video shows Kelly tearfully explaining that Barnes & Noble plans to stock only the top two books per publisher per season. She said her publisher told her that Barnes & Noble had decided to not stock the fourth book in her series, and many others in the middle grade and young adult genres, until the first editions sell successfully elsewhere.

Other authors and supporters replied to Kelly’s video to share their concern over the stocking policy they perceive as discriminatory.

The middle grade and YA genres are getting flooded with books by marginalized authors representing groups that have been grossly underrepresented in the literary industry.

In many cases, these authors, like Kelly Yang, have a large social media following that includes other similarly situated authors. So word spreads. If readers are not able to access these authors’ books from a highly visible chain bookstore, then that can spell trouble for overall sales.

Barnes & Noble boasts itself as the No. 1 book retailer in the U.S. and as the “internet’s largest bookstore” on its website.

CEO James Daunt views Barnes & Noble’s three-year-old stocking policy in a different light. “By allowing proper bookselling to take place at the store level, good books will have more space and better presentation, as well as genuine support from the booksellers of each store,” Daunt told NBC News.

“When we just took what was imposed by publishers, approximately 80% of the books were ultimately returned unsold. In effect, the bookstores were filled with books customers had no interest in reading. Now we sell most of what we buy,” he added.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Daunt said, “What we are doing—with middle grade and adult, fiction, and nonfiction, alike—is to exercise taste and judgment. This is to buy less but, if it is done with skill, it is to sell more.”

Authors took issue with the CEO’s words with phrases such as “good books will have more space and better presentation,” “books customers had no interest in reading,” and “to exercise taste and judgment” when referencing the wide variety of kids’ books.

Those already operating on smaller marketing budgets will have to prove their books are saleable in order to attain the coveted spot on a Barnes & Noble bookshelf. As for those unsaleable books, I wrote a blog post recently about how these books circulate to dollar stores and contribute to literacy access for consumers who cannot afford new books from Barnes & Noble.

Access is key here. Many consumers don’t think twice about buying a book from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com because these marketplaces are in their neighborhoods or online. Mindful book buyers have to go out of their way to seek books from an indie bookstore, so if these titles by authors of color solely depend on the indie bookstore market, then their sales are sure to plummet, unfortunately.

Even getting on best-sellers lists is at risk, but more importantly, potential readers—we’re talking kids here—don’t have their eyes on these books. That could be the greatest travesty of all for these authors who feel the Barnes & Noble stocking policy punches them in the gut. It’s not all about the money for these authors while Barnes & Noble, one of the only bookstore chains left, is about the money.

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Penguin Random House trial comes to a questioning end

Oral arguments ended this week in the antitrust trial of the moment between the Department of Justice and Penguin Random House in its bid to buy rival Simon & Schuster.

The federal government wants to prevent the potential Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster behemoth from dominating the book industry and putting authors at financial risk. The two publishers and Simon & Schuster’s parent company ViacomCBS, which put the Big Five publisher up for sale in 2020, vowed they would put authors first, but when it comes to book sales, that all depends on consumers (and bookstores).

The trial seemed to focus on authors who made six-figure advances and higher, according to media reports, such as Stephen King. As we wait for the verdict this fall, whatever the outcome, it will shake the industry to its core.

If Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster are allowed to go ahead with their merger, the Big Five of the top five publishers, which also include Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins, may go down to the Big Four. The impact on employees, authors, and literary agents will remain to be seen if the merger goes through.

Taylor Jenkins Reid accused of racial insensitivity with new book

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid is getting criticism for being a White author and featuring yet another Latina main character in her new novel. In Carrie Soto Is Back, the title character is Latina and looking for a comeback in professional tennis, which means competing against an Asian player who is experiencing racism.

Fellow book blogs like Bowties and Books and Tomes & Textiles, which are headed by bloggers who identify as Latine, say this is the second indiscretion from the author. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo also had its title character identify as Latina, though she was passing for White and straight for Hollywood success.

As we enter US Open season with all eyes on Serena Williams, Carrie Soto Is Back has conveniently received marketing dollars with pop-ups that started at Wimbledon in July. The bloggers argue this is an example of letting a White author tell stories about characters of color without investing in authors of color at the same level.

Brit Bennett manifests American Girl book deal

The best-selling author of The Vanishing Half shared a tweet from 2016 saying she wished she could strike a deal with American Girl. That dream now came true as Brit Bennett’s book Meet Claudie: An American Girl is a reality via an audiobook out this week.

A new American Girl character, Claudie is a Black girl living among creatives in 1920s Harlem. When her family gets an eviction notice for their boardinghouse, Claudie hatches a plan to save the day that incorporates her own creativity.

Robinne Lee’s ‘Idea of You’ book-to-film casts leading role

Anne Hathaway will star in the Amazon Prime Video film adaptation of actress Robinne Lee’s romance novel The Idea of You. Centered on a 40-something French American divorcée who falls in love with her daughter’s favorite boy bander, the 2017 novel will also be produced by Robinne, Anne, and Gabrielle Union, known for her book-to-screen works as well as her best-selling essay collections.

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Book Review: ‘Zyla & Kai’ by Kristina Forest

*Given a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

Zyla & Kai by Kristina Forest is a young adult romance bringing together two teens who think they are too different but find enough common ground to develop a relationship that always seems threatened by outside factors. 

The story starts with the title characters going missing from a school ski trip, but it really starts the summer before where the two are lowly amusement park employees trying to earn extra cash for college. 

Hezekiah “Kai” Johnson is working at Sailor Joe’s Amusement Park over the summer when he and his on-and-off-again girlfriend Camille start arguing in front of customers. Camille approaches Kai over his alleged flirtatious behavior with other girls on the job. Kai denies the allegations, but the hullabaloo has almost cost them their jobs. Once Kai gets home to Aunt Brenda and Uncle Steve, they tell him he needs to swear off girls until he graduates high school and matriculates at the family alma mater Morehouse College, the historically Black men’s college in Atlanta. His father and Uncle Steve are college alumni while his mother and Aunt Brenda attended the Black women’s college next door, Spelman College. The dream to continue the HBCU legacy keeps Kai motivated, especially since he lost both of his parents in a car accident. Even when he catches up with his therapist, he doesn’t seem to understand why he keeps getting entangled with the wrong girls.

Zyla Matthews is the opposite. She’s afraid to commit to any relationships. Her mother constantly curling herself up in a ball and crying over her latest boyfriend is enough relationship drama for Zyla to handle. Since Zyla, her mother, and her sister live with her great-aunt, Zyla wants to add more money to her college stash. She has her eyes on fashion school in Paris. So, she’s spending her summer at Sailor Joe’s. When a rowdy customer threatens Zyla at a booth, Kai inadvertently comes to the rescue.

Sparks fly between the two employees even as summer fades and they attend their separate schools. Morning text message exchanges kindle the flame. Once Zyla and Kai start getting serious, they fret over introducing each other to their respective guardians. Kai’s uncle and aunt had already banned him from dating while Zyla’s mother and great-aunt have track records of making mistakes with men. 

Despite their families’ reactions to their budding romance, they get the blessing to continue seeing each other. Zyla goes to parties with students who go to school with Kai, including his trail of ex-girlfriends. This worries Zyla, who has never been in a relationship and fears she’ll get hurt like her mother does every other week. Kai, who’s still battling the overwhelming grief of losing his parents suddenly, tries to reassure her that he only has eyes for her. Then on Valentine’s Day, when they shed all their insecurities, the night is ruined to the point they have to face their fears again about their relationship. 

What stands out in this book is how both characters are dealing with their inner demons and letting those demons get in the way of their relationship. With Kai growing up without his parents and Zyla still facing the post-divorce reality within her family, they are trying to figure out how to define love for themselves. The hormones are telling them one thing, but their brains are forcing them to think further on their gravitational pull. Kai is known as a player when in actuality he’s looking for love in all the wrong places. He tries to live down his reputation as Zyla becomes insecure about being thought of as another one of Kai’s girlfriends, mainly when they’re around Kai’s crew. 

The family dynamics also play a large role in the story. Kai is close to Uncle Steve and Aunt Brenda, but he feels he is failing at being his best for them. They’re the ones who took him in when he became an orphan, so he feels he’s letting them down when he prematurely commits to his promise of not dating any more girls. In the beginning of the book, we see Zyla comforting her mother in the car after another breakup. Zyla is the one who lets her mother rest in the backseat and drives them to their destination. She has to be mature beyond her years for herself and her younger sister Jade since her mother doesn’t have it together and that’s why they live with Aunt Ida, a curmudgeon always muttering about how bad men are. 

If you’re interested in reading the audiobook, narrator Tashi Thomas does a fantastic job of switching up the characters’ voices. When she returns to the story narration, sometimes her voice comes off as mechanical, but the audio recording is a smooth listen.

Overall, this YA romance dives deep into how family dynamics can interweave into a blossoming relationship. The mental health aspect ties into the family dynamics as we see Kai attending therapist sessions that contribute to his character development of trying to be more self-aware about his relationships. Zyla, an aspiring fashion designer, uses retail therapy as her outlet instead finding pieces at the thrift store to create her own designs. They are teenagers looking for ways to cope with their environments, and once they bond together, they start to question their stability as a unit and as individuals. The ups and downs to get to the happily-ever-after feels like a pleasant ride on the Ferris wheel.

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Jenny Han Talks Asian Representation in Books on ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Tour

Lola Tung as Belly in 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'

Best-selling young adult novelist Jenny Han has another series in the book-to-TV limelight. After finding success on Netflix with the three film adaptations of her To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series, she now has her first YA series The Summer I Turned Pretty getting the screen treatment with its recent premiere on Amazon Prime Video.

Not new to advocacy for having more Asian and Asian American stories represented in books, Jenny spoke about the issue on her press tour while a mention made an appearance on the new TV show.

On CBS Mornings this week, anchor Gayle King asked if Jenny was hurt when she wasn’t able to sell her early works featuring an Asian character. Jenny says her feelings weren’t hurt “because it was so matter-of-fact.”

To be able to sell her first YA novel, she made her main character Belly Conklin, played by Lola Tung onscreen, appear White.

Jenny Han in ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ (Peter Taylor/Prime Video)

“I had tried to sell a book with an Asian main character before this one, and people weren’t really interested in it,” says Jenny, who’s also the executive producer of the show. “The thing I would hear is we already have a book with an Asian. I thought with The Summer I Turned Pretty, it was a story I hoped would kind of have an effervescence to it that people can lock onto. After that, I wrote To All the Boys, and I was able to write my own ticket once I had garnered trust from an audience that might not pick up a book with a cover with someone who didn’t look like them.”

The character of Belly became half-Asian, half-White, and is now depicted as biracial on the updated media tie-in cover issued by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before was the first best-seller to have an Asian girl on the cover, according to the author. The fight for representation even spilled onto the choice to have her headshot on the back cover.

“Even with my first book, it was important to me to put a picture on the back of it because at first they were like, ‘Hmm, we don’t really need it.’ It wasn’t really done at the time,” she says. “I want other young Asian women to see that and think it’s possible.”

The Summer I Turned Pretty follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin who’s on the verge of turning 16 when she heads off to Cousins Beach in Massachusetts with her mother and older brother for another summer with the Fishers, her mother’s best friend and two sons.

The foursome who grew up together every summer are now teenagers, and Belly feels the energy shift between her and the oldest Fisher son Conrad, played by Christopher Briney, and the younger Fisher son Jeremiah, played by Gavin Casalegno. Belly always had a crush on Conrad when she was considered too young and nerdy. Now that she’s blossoming into womanhood, heightened by a debutante ball, she becomes entangled in a love triangle that stretches beyond her and the two brothers.

In one scene in the fourth episode “Summer Heat,” after a conflict reaches a fever pitch in the Fisher summer home, Belly’s author mother, Laurel, played by Jackie Chung, heads to a bar to cool off. There, she sees the local author she’s been competing with in the beach town’s bookstore. Once they start chatting, the state of their careers comes up.

“When we went out with my first novel, everyone said, ‘Uhhh, there is no market for a book about a Filipino main character, and now it’s all they want from me,” says author Cleveland, played by Alfredo Narciso, about his treatment in the beginning of his fictional publishing career.

The show also stars Rachel Blanchard as Susannah Fisher, the mother of Conrad and Jeremiah. Rachel starred as the ’90s TV version of Cher Horowitz, the main character of Clueless loosely based on Jane Austen’s classic Emma.

The second season of the series has already received the green light for production.

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Book Review: ‘Seven Days in June’ by Tia Williams

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Seven Days in June by Tia Williams follows two best-selling authors who reunite on the New York literati circuit years after a high school fling that left them scarred. It’s a sophisticated romance still accompanied by a happily ever after.

Manhattanite single mom Eva Mercy is a former best-selling novelist whose Black vampire romance series à la Twilight still excites fans via the interwebs. By chance, an author drops out of a panel event, and Eva gets the last-minute invitation to fill the spot. That’s where she sees fellow, still-successful best-selling novelist Shane Hall, a mysterious intellectual who makes women and men alike swoon. Eva tries not to swoon because it turns out she and Shane went to high school once in D.C. and spent a week of debauchery in a mansion during their senior year. They meet up for a day in New York where the deep-rooted chemistry overtakes them. The day blends into another one and another where they start catching up about what went wrong when they were teenagers. Eva thinks Shane, who was a foster child and drug dealer at the time, abandoned her at her lowest point, but she learns that another force divided them. As they try to rekindle what they had as adults, Eva and Shane must combat their demons to accept the love that was severed so many years ago.

This is Tia Williams’ most complex work yet. Known for centering her novels on Black women in New York working in media, the author adds more layers to Eva’s character and Shane’s character not common in a lot of women’s fiction and romance novels. In adolescence, the main characters are dealing with substance abuse, self-harm, unstable homes, and missing parents. In adulthood, the age-old traumas return with them realizing how reflective their behaviors are when they interact with each other and the kids in their lives like Eva’s Gen Z daughter Audre and Shane’s mentee Ty. The character and storyline complexity blends well with the ubiquitous pop culture references the author loves to add to her novels.

Also, this is the first novel the author makes her main character an author as well when her previous novels’ main characters are beauty and fashion editors like her former day job life. Switching up the career choice also shows more depth with Eva translating her healing process through her books and Shane doing the same with his. Another element of the novel is Eva living with her invisible disability of suffering from debilitating migraines that worsen with barometric pressure. This also reflects the author’s life. She has given this trait to her first novel’s main character from The Accidental Diva, but this time around in Seven Days in June she makes Eva feel the everyday pain and impact and gives Audre the fear of seeing her mother chronically ill. The migraines also contribute to Eva’s writer’s block and how she’s struggling to deliver the 15th book of her famous series that is getting the film treatment with some hiccups along the way.

Overall, this novel is an excellent summer beach read that’s definitely a page-turner the deeper you get into the book. Tia Williams’ last novel from 2016, The Perfect Find, is in production with Gabrielle Union for Netflix. This novel also has silver-screen potential, especially with the book-to-film subplot that brings up diversity and inclusion in Hollywood projects.



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Book Review: ‘The Boyfriend Project’ by Farrah Rochon

The Boyfriend ProjectThe Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*Given an advanced reading copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon is a delightful romance novel that delves into the workplace relationship.

Samiah is a talented software engineer working at one of the hottest cybersecurity startups in Austin, Texas. When another woman live tweets her horrible date with Samiah’s boyfriend, Samiah finds herself at a restaurant telling him off along with a third woman. As their confrontation goes viral, Samiah and her two new friends, London and Taylor, become internet celebrities. It’s embarrassing to Samiah until a new colleague Daniel shows concern for her well-being. Nobody else has been doing that, so this catches Samiah’s attention. With superstar pediatric surgeon London and rising fitness guru Taylor, Samiah embarks on the boyfriend project, where the three women promise to stay committed to their goals for six months in order to be prepared to have a real boyfriend. Samiah decides to focus on a mobile app that she had abandoned years before. But the attraction to Daniel is too strong. They eventually fall for each other until Daniel’s undercover mission threatens their budding relationship.

Though the beginning comes off goofy with the date going viral and the girls showing up right on time to catch a player in motion, the story develops with Samiah and Daniel fighting their urges to stay focused on their ambitious careers in tech and Samiah, London, and Taylor cementing a solid friendship.

Overall, it’s a digestible romance that delivers on the promise of a fun read. It shows successful black women and men trying to find love in a millennial-attracting metropolis. The mystery part of what Daniel is trying to dig up on Samiah’s company adds another element as does Samiah’s dedication to increasing the company’s community service reputation. The descriptive career elements add more oomph to this story.

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Romance Writers of America Debacle Reignites Diversity Conversation

Photo by Úrsula Madariaga from Pexels

Over the last week of the year, news spread of novelist Courtney Milan getting punished by Romance Writers of America for making claims that fellow romance novelists had written racial stereotypes into their works. Knocking diversity down a peg at the 9,000-member writers’ trade group, the news also showed how these groups are still struggling with supporting members of color and maintaining a diverse board.

Now a former RWA board member, Courtney, who identifies as Chinese-American, said on Twitter that fellow member Kathryn Lynn Davis had used stereotypes of Asian women in a book, according to media reports. Kathryn and Suzan Tisdale, who work together at an imprint, filed complaints with the RWA over Courtney’s comments, according to the organization’s statement.

This led to the RWA ethics panel suspending Courtney’s membership for one year and banning her permanently from leadership positions. When this news surfaced online two days before Christmas, RWA changed course to avoid “the spreading of false information, threats, and personal information” and rescinded the sanctions. Several board members resigned over issues connected to the situation while RWA members and other writers continue to express their opinions on social media.

For writers in any genre, RWA is considered one of the most valuable resources in the industry. From experience, I’ve been to one local event where I paid $10 and learned several book marketing techniques from a successful indie author. Around 50 people came to the event, crammed into a school classroom. I had never been to a regular literary group meeting that garnered such high attendance and audience engagement.

When I joined a local board of the Women’s National Book Association and attended the national meeting, other members warmly welcomed me. It was due to the attempt to diversify the board and the association as a whole. This is slowly becoming a priority at these long-standing writers’ organizations yet there are still a lot of missteps. For example, WNBA had a local board with a black president and vice president and the chapter fell apart due to the lack of financial resources the national organization wasn’t willing to contribute.

Like Courtney tweets below, these organizations depend on extra money from their members, who many haven’t yet been published and/or don’t have disposable cash to get the help the organization promises.

https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1212844250137858049

I’ve also been a part of writing critique groups where I would be one of the only people of color in the room. I have expressed to writers when I believe a scene or the use of a character can come off as offensive. Once, I told a writer her story revolving around the police shooting death of her main character’s unarmed black male friend and it turning out to be all about the main character, who was a white female, could be seen as racist and/or insensitive. I added that the reader doesn’t see the black friend’s family or community who would be more devastated; just the white woman and her community. Writers may want to add diversity to their books but how it’s done can make a difference in whether they’ll receive backlash later down the road.

In RWA’s statement, it says Kathryn Lynn Davis lost a three-book contract because of Courtney’s tweets. The New York Times reports Suzan Tisdale has lost potential authors on her imprint over the controversy.

Personally, I’ve found solace and support in the growing number of black women’s writing and reading communities such as Mocha Girls Read, The Free Black Women’s Library, and Well-Read Black Girl. There’s been exponential growth in people of color establishing their own organizations due to not feeling comfortable within industry-respected organizations like RWA.

I started she lit as a literary lifestyle blog for all women because of the thick racial divide between white women and nonwhite women, millennial women and middle-aged women. Ageism also plays a role, where you put all these women from different backgrounds in one room and expect reading and writing to connect us all. But the range of time periods we’ve lived in perpetuates the racism or the general misunderstanding of each other.

The RWA story also touches on the lack of diverse beta readers writers may use. Writers tend to rely on their communities to go over their polished manuscripts, but those communities may not be that diverse, e.g. all women, all white women, all straight women, etc. A diverse panel of beta readers can help detect offensive descriptions that won’t receive such criticism and hurt an author’s career. A literary agent and a publisher may not see those issues because there is a diversity problem in the industry with most agents being white.

This is the second social media blow-up in the last two months involving well-known women writers oversharing a private conversation or matter on Twitter that turned into racial backlash caught by the eye of mainstream media.